How to Use Your Brain’s Hidden Power to Achieve Your Health Goals with John Assaraf

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Welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show with celebrity nutrition expert, fitness hall of famer and four time New York Times best selling author, JJ Virgin. JJ is a warrior mom whose knowledge and expertise have helped change hundreds of thousands of lives. With over 3.5 million podcast downloads and appearances on Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, the Today Show, Rachael Ray, Larry King, Love.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This show is about you, not about me. I want to help you find practical, real world ways to dial in your health and mindset so you can finally lose that weight and feel strong and energized. Stop settling for less than your personal best. It's time to find out how to look and feel better than ever. And I'll be right here with you the whole way. Welcome to this week's podcast. So if you feel like I make these health goals, I have best intentions and then I fail.

I got you covered today.

I have got my buddy John Assaraf, the founder and CEO of NeuroGym, New York Times bestselling author. I've had him on the show before, hang out with him. In fact just had dinner with him last night and I wanted him to come on the show because he is just fantastic at taking the strategies that I teach and that hear from all these amazing experts I bring on the show and making sure they actually get implemented. Sound good? Yep, it does. So let me tell you a little bit more about John and then I'll talk to you a little bit about what we're going to be doing today before I do a shout out. So John now is one of the leading mindset and behavioral experts in the world. He's appeared numerous times on Larry King, Anderson Cooper and oh my gosh, I have seen so much envy on the Ellen show which is the show that I would just die to be on. He has built five multi million dollar companies, written two New York Times best selling books and has been featured in eight movies including the Secret. And now he has the company Neurogym which I do some nutritional coaching for where he has the most advanced technologies and evidence, evidence based brain training methods to help individuals and corporations unlock and ign their fullest potential. He does a really cool brain day where he goes through and does all of this stuff that you can do and has incredible programs and recently came out with a book Inner Size which is going he's going to give you a little highlight of today and show you how to start to put these things to use in your life. And I've literally heard him speak on this a number of times now and watched him just give exercises that can start to give you a big shift quickly. So we've great show notes today@jjvirgin.com LifeBlueprint. You're going to hear why I used LifeBlueprint when we do the interview because you're going to get something super cool and you'll also be able to get all the great show notes. He's going to walk us through an exercise that you will want to start doing immediately. All right. Now before we dive into that interview, I want to do a big shout out to Jo Tutrani and Joe Tutrani. I've known her for years. She says, JJ the nutritionist to the Nutritionist Five Star Review in Apple Podcasts. She says, JJ, I'm a functional medicine nutritionist practicing for 25 years. I've met you and have been to your seminars and I remember, by the way, Joe, I remember you. Very exciting. I'm still utilizing the information you created in my practice. That is how relevant it still is.

Wow.

I listen to your podcast every day driving home from New York City to my home in Long Island. It makes a long commute so much better. You are someone I trust, look up to and admire and I'm always learning new information I share with my clients. Your guests are amazing, as are you. Keep up the great work. Wow. Thank you. Hopefully I'll get to see you again. My goodness. And that was very, very sweet. I so appreciate these reviews. If you are feeling called to do one, my gosh, don't hold back. And while you're there, of course be sure to subscribe so you do not miss an episode. I'm doing a lot more episodes now. What I've been doing is rotating in Guess and then what I also do is rotate in topics that you are asking about. So if there's something you'd like to learn more about, be sure to jump on over to either my Facebook @j virgin official or Instagram jj virgin, send us a message and say I want more on X or Y or Z and we go in and do the research and do a podcast on it. It looks like something the audience, the community is going to love. So I'd love to support you in that way and I super appreciate you supporting me. All right, John Asroth, welcome back this show. I'm so glad you're here.

It's so awesome to be Here again.

Well, the community, my community just loves you, I think. Like, I just was at your house for dinner, as we both know, and I was. I was saying something about on Facebook Live, and people like, oh, my gosh, I want to go. You almost had a whole. A whole entourage coming up there.

Love it. It's so funny, because my audience, you know, when I talk about you, they're like, oh, my God, you don't really know her personally, do you? So I guess your audience is.

No, we just send our stunt doubles to hang out with each other. That would be great. Well, we're the perfect complement. And that's what everyone's going to hear about today, because what I do without what you do can fail. And so what I really want to dive into is you have your new book, Inner Size, which is awesome. Everybody needs to have it. And we're going to talk about that and how it works and how you can apply these ideas to your everyday life so that you stop sabotaging yourself. You start having the success that you want and deserve. But before we get into all of that, because I know you also have some specific things you can share with people right away to start making the difference. So I'm teasing everybody right there. But before that, what I'd love to hear is, how did you come into all this? You have such a varied background, and I've heard a lot of your, like, younger, younger story, but I don't really know how you got to here with using really being this neuroscience geek.

I think the. The first part of it was as a result of being extremely sick. When I was in my early 20s, I developed something called severe ulcerative colitis. And so that means I had ulcers in my colon. They were bleeding ulcers. And it was very painful. Not only was it painful, I had to go to do a sigmoidoscopy every month for two years where they put tubes into you where they shouldn't put tubes into you and look inside of your colon. And I was taking 25 Salazapyrin Sulfate pills a day to reduce the inflammation. I was doing a two betanisol enemas a day, one in the morning and one at night, which were cortisol to reduce the inflammation. And the reason is because the doctor said if it doesn't heal, they're going to have to remove about 40 inches or 50 inches of my colon at the time. And so while all this was happening and I was at the mercy of. I don't know if it was the gods or mercy of the pain. I was watching a TV show, and they were talking about something called psychoneuroimmunology. And this, again, was back in 1982, so a long time ago. And simply put, psychoneuroimmunology is the body mind connection. And some of the doctors that were on there said, yeah, your thoughts matter, your emotions matter, your stress levels matter. You can control a lot more than you think with the power of your mind. And so I got fascinated with some of what they were saying. And so I did a little bit of research, a lot of research onto, you know, this mind body connection. I did a lot of research on what was causing, you know, my dis ease. What's interesting is they were talking about symptoms versus causes, and I was consistently focusing on the darn symptoms of my ulcerative colitis. And I was perpetually, you know, thinking about what I don't want, not realizing that I was creating more of it and reinforcing what was actually causing it. And so, through probably about 90 days worth of research and talking to a bunch of people, I started to do a few things. Number one is I figured out, okay, what is a perfect diet? Like, if I could choose a perfect diet that doesn't cause inflammation, that doesn't cause me to have to run to the bathroom without any control, what would it be? And I got a nutritionist to help me with that. And again, I was early 20s. Then I asked, okay, how would I get my mindset right and the emotions, you know, to align with healing instead of dis ease? So how do I put myself in a state of health and at ease versus state of dis ease? And so I discovered, you know, there's nine systems in the body. And long story short, I wrote out an affirmation to start off with. And every day, I recite this affirmation. My body and all its organs were created by the infinite intelligence in my subconscious mind. It created all my bones, bones, muscles, tissues, organs, and it knows how to heal me now. Perfect are the creative, intelligent forces within me. I am now perfectly healthy. Now, just so you, jj, and everybody who's listening knows this, I recited that from memory from 37 or 35 years ago. And the reason is because I started with that affirmation, focusing on what I want. Every day I would read that, close my eyes, I would see it happening. I would feel it happening every day. 5, 6, 7, 8 times. I recorded that on a cassette back then and listened to the cassette while I was driving every single day. And so I Got my diet right, I started to exercise. I got my mindset and emotions right. Would you believe that five weeks later, I didn't need to take my pills? Five weeks later, I was a hundred percent perfectly healed. And when I went to my doctor's appointment. His name is Dr. Wu.

Oh, I always love to hear what the doctors say when this. When this goes down. Of course, our. All our doctors, our community are like, yeah, of course that happened.

Yeah. But for two years, you know, he wanted me just to continue on the drugs and then possibly, you know, have my cone removed. And then when I came in, he was like, when we did the sigmoid oscomies, like, what in the hell did you do? You're in remission. Your colon is perfectly healthy. I said, well, I did this, this, and this. He goes, wow, okay, we'll keep taking the pills. And now what?

What?

Keep taking the pills and I'll see you in 90 days instead of in 30 days. And I said, no, no, no, you don't understand. I focused on the cause. You were treating the symptoms. I do not want to take the pills anymore. I am not going to do the cortisone enemas anymore, and I'm not doing a sigmoidoscopy every month. And this was after two years. And so that was the beginning, jj of me going, holy shit, I've got a really powerful brain that if I could learn how to direct it in the right way, maybe there's other things that I can achieve in my life. And that's where this really all began. It began from a state of total dis. Ease.

Well, what's super cool is what you're talking about is free, and anyone can do it. And that is what is so cool. So if you're listening, going, all right, you know, I'm not where I want to be with my health. And it's. We know it's not for a lack of strategy. You're listening. There's strategies all around. We give them away for free. So let's start to walk through what inner size is and how it works. Because I know you kind of. Because you sort of gave some of that right there, but you have a much more concise system.

Yeah. So. So inner sizes, if you think about. If you remember Jack Lalanne in the 70s and 80s, he really coined the term exercise for, you know, your muscles and your internal organs. Well, inner size are mental and emotional. I'll call them exercises, but they're inner size for your brain. So there are ways to be able to release stress fairly quickly. There are ways to help your body heal quicker. There are ways to activate your focus cent, deactivate your fear centers, release the disempowering thoughts or emotions you have about yourself and your ability to achieve your goals. And all of this requires you building your neuro muscles. So instead of your physical muscles, build your neuro muscles of confidence, of beliefs, of certainty, of focus, of clarity, et cetera. And you can do that through simple inner sizes. And that's what the book is all about. And what I also did for the book, jj, is for anybody who buys a copy of the book, or more than one copy, I've got a whole bunch of gifts, including eight brain training audios to actually guide people through the inner sizes in the book.

We will put links for all of that in the show notes. Plus, I know you have that blueprint too. And so I love all the tools because I've heard you speak on this, and you have very specific tools that you can put into immediate action, which is just awesome. And, you know, you talked about doing this for five weeks way back when. I've seen you do things that start to make people shift in the moment. Although five weeks for something where you were going to be on medication for the rest of your life is incredible. You know, you know how people are. Oh, my gosh. I've done that for three days. Nothing's happened yet.

You know, when I was using the. The five weeks, by five weeks, I was perfectly, you know, healthy again. Within a week, I noticed a huge difference in the number of times, you know, that I didn't have bowel control, you know, and it's pretty embarrassing. But, you know, I want to. I want to make sure that I. I don't hold anything back with anybody, is the shifts are instant. Sometimes you don't see it or feel it initially. Just like when you plant a seed under the soil, you don't see the activity that's happening underneath the soil where the seed is actually developing. Some roots, you know, that go deep into the soil. It's only until, you know, the roots are set and the law of gestation has taken over that you start to see the sprout coming above the soil. So there's lots happening. We know from the science of neuroplasticity, which is really all my work is around neuroplasticity, that anytime you have a new thought or you reinforce a thought, there's stuff happening. There are neurons that are connecting or reinforcing, and the neurons that have the most dominant Reinforcement patterns are the ones that activate automatically. And that's why most people, you know, keep achieving the same results over and over again. They don't take enough time to create that new empowering pattern that will override the old one.

Can you walk us through one right now? Because I've heard you do a couple different exercises. What's something someone right now if they're sabotaging? Because I think, I think so often. And here you'll love this. So I did a query to my community and I said, if you're not where you want to be right now with your health, why not? Why not? And I figured they're going to say, you know, they don't want to give up their, their gluten or they can't stop the sugar. Right. I mean, knowing me, that's what I would assume. And that was not it. Now this will not surprise you. They said the number one reason was they didn't feel worthy. It was a self esteem issue.

Right.

And I know that you talk about this as, as this big reason. Let's, let's dive into that.

Yeah. There, there are four major reasons why people will not achieve their goals that are above knowledge and skill. Right. So knowledge and skill is one. But there's four things that are way, way, way ahead of knowledge and skills to why people don't achieve goals. So we'll. So number one, when somebody is feeling. I'll share the first two inner sizes in the book for people. So we know that our brain works on its own 99.9% of the time without any direction from us on thinking. But everything else is pretty much automatic. But what we also know is that when we have our stress center, anxiety center, or fear center activated, we're shutting off the part of our brain that I call in the book the Einstein part of the brain. And the Einstein part of the brain is the left prefrontal cortex. It's just above your left eye, behind your skull. And this part of the brain is the CEO and executive director of your whole life and your brain. And when you deactivate Einstein, chances are that Frankenstein's been activated. And that's the right prefrontal cortex that's connected directly to your memory bank and brings up all of the reasons why you can't, why you shouldn't, how it's caused you pain and suffering in the past or it might cause you pain in the future. So we've got this tug of war going on in our brain. So when somebody, for example, feels like they don't deserve to look great and feel great and have the energy and vitality they want, maybe even the partner that they want. We know that that is a self image issue. Now the self image is part of what our subconscious mind. And so in a state of unworthiness, we are going to actually deactivate the motivational center of the brain. And when we deactivate the motivational center of the brain, we actually deactivate the motor cortex of the brain, which means we're not going to get off our ass and do what we need to do. We won't take the simplest of steps. And so the first key is to use one of the higher faculties of mind. And we have three core neuromuscles. The, the first one is awareness. It's a higher faculty because a pig or a horse has all of the same components as every human being, basically. And what gives us the upper hand is the awareness. And I'll share with you in just a moment what to be aware of. And then it's awareness that gives us choice. And it's in the choice that we can find our freedom. So one of the first inner sizes that people should be practicing all day long is called Take six Calm the circuits. So let's say you're in a state of stress or anxiety, or you just don't feel like doing something that you know you should do. Maybe you have some, you know, some doubt, self doubt, maybe even, you know, you, you have these feelings that, you know, I'm not worthy enough to achieve that goal. So the first inner size is called Take six Calm the Circuits. And if you take six deep breaths in through your nose, gently, gently in four or five second increments, and then blow out through your mouth. When you blow out through your mouth, though, pucker, like you're blowing out through a straw, and focus on the airflow leaving the straw. And when you do that, inhale for four or five seconds and exhale as if you're blowing out through a straw, you actually are deactivating the stress center, the center in the brain that's going to activate if you think about achieving a goal. So you deactivate the stress center, even the fear center, and even the disempowering self image center of the brain. And in a calm, relaxed state, you move to inner size number two. And inner size number two is called aya a I a and aya stands for awareness. And what you want to do is be aware of your thoughts, feelings, emotions, sensations and behaviors. Now in this quiet relaxed state, as you're breathing and just being aware. You must do this in a state where you're not blaming or shaming yourself, not judging or criticizing yourself. So no blame, no shame, no guilt, no justification. None of that is just pure awareness. And in this state of awareness of your thoughts or emotions, then you ask yourself, what's my intention? Is my intention to allow my low self esteem to hold me back?

No.

Is my intention to be fearful? No. Is my intention to be angry or stressed? Is that my intention? No. What is my intention? My intention is to be positive. My intention is to focus on how I can. My intention is to focus on what's one thing that I could do to actually move towards the goal that I want to achieve. And then the third A or the A in Aya is action. What's one action that I'm going to take right now? What's one action I'm going to take right now is going to move me towards the goal. And the reason these two work so well together is when you deactivate the stress center or the fear center in the brain, you actually are moving blood flow right back up into the left prefrontal cortex, the Einstein that can help you figure out how to let go of your disempowered state of not being worthy or smart enough or good enough or too young or too old, et cetera. So it's in this state of awareness and choice that you become empowered. But there's more than that that's happening. The very act of doing this changes your brain, changes the neural patterns and the structure. And when you start doing this every day, every week, every month, and you do it for, you know, let's say a hundred days, when you are being deliberate, you are consciously and deliberately evolving yourself. And this is one of the keys to anybody wanting to achieve their goals. You have to reduce to the ridiculous. First one action step, build that neuromuscle. Boom. Then another one, Good. Build that muscle, then another one. It's in the. When people think of achieving, you know, their health goals and they're focusing on, you know, the big end goal and how many pounds they want to lose or how much faster they want to run or whatever the big goal is, if they don't reduce it to the ridiculous, their brain doesn't believe that they're going to do it, so they give up before they even try.

So basically, you are creating a new story for yourself.

Absolutely. You're creating a new narrative, but you're also being deliberate. You're being deliberate in what you want to do. And there's a couple other techniques and tricks we'll get into, but those are the fundamental two that we start everybody off from. If most people don't realize they have thoughts, but they're not their thoughts, they have the ability to think. But most people would rather die than think. And so when we get people to actually stop and become aware, then we can start taking actions to change the pattern. Everything that we do is based on patterns that are automatically running in our brains, part of the default mode network in the brain, and something known as the automatic self. So the results that we are achieving right now, that's part of the automatic self doing its thing without you really doing much intervention. So what we want to do is create our own intervention and stop the patterns, whether they're thought, emotional or behavioral patterns that are keeping us achieving the same results over and over again. And the key as well is if you do it one time, that's conscious effort. If you do it, you know, 20 times, 30 times, you've got to do it enough times until it becomes a subconscious pattern. And according to the latest brain research, the University of London did a study that came out last year. It takes between 66 days and 365 days to change a neural pattern that has become a habit.

So where does this three weeks to change a habit thing come from? So that is just an urban legend.

It's an urban. It's a Myth from the 70s and 80s that it takes three weeks to change a habit. There was. We didn't even have the technology in the 70s and 80s to be able to see neural patterns, let alone make predictions about it. It was just a best guess, estim estimate.

It's so. Isn't it amazing how these things just become real and wow.

All right, well, we only use 5 to 7% of our brain. That's not true. We use 100 of our brain every 24 hour period.

That crazy. All right, so first of all, that was just awesome. And you also have, for everybody listening, your exceptional life blueprint. What's that? And I'll tell them how to get.

Many years ago, when I was learning how to achieve my goals, some people know this. I got into a lot of trouble as a kid. And between the ages of 15 or 14 to 17, I was in trouble with the law. Very, very close to going to jail. And I had a meeting with a man. His name was Alan Brown. And when I met with Mr. Brown, he was a very, very successful business owner, philanthropist, husband, wonderful human being. He put together a couple sheets of paper for me for our meeting around setting my goals. And he asked me, what do I want to achieve? And I said, what do you mean what do I want to achieve? I want to make enough money to pay for my rent and buy a car. He says, great, but that's like really small short term goals. He says, what do you want to achieve in your health and wealth and relationships and career and business and fun and experiences and charitable. And I told him, I said, Mr. Brown, I have no idea. I have never even thought about it other than seeing the TV show Lifestyles of the rich and Famous and wanting some of the stuff that they had. He says, well, you can have that. So what he made me do is he didn't make me, gave me these sheets of paper and gave me a couple of hours to write down some of my goals for one year, three years, five years, you know, up to 25 years ahead of where we were. And I was 19 at the time, 1980, it was April 1980. And so I came back and he looked at all of my goals and most of them were materialistic things. He says, I mean, this is not unrealistic. I said, you know, I want to retire at age 45 with $3 million, you know, in the bank. I want to have a Mercedes Benz, I want to have a house paid for, I want to retire my parents, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. And he said, that's all reasonable. He says, you're 19 years old now. These goals for when you're by the time you're 45, they're very, very doable. He says the answer to whether you're going to achieve these goals or I'm going to give you a question and the answer you give me will determine whether you'll achieve these goals or not. I go, really? An answer to one question and he says, yeah. He says, are you interested in achieving these goals or are you committed? He said to me, he said, son, he says, if you're interested, you'll do what's easy and convenient. If you're interested, you'll come up with your stories and excuses and they're going to drive your life and your behaviors. If you're interested, you know, you're going to make up all of the reasons why you can't. He says, but if you're committed, you will upgrade your knowledge, you will upgrade your skills, you will develop self discipline, you'll change the beliefs about what's possible and you'll change the story that you have in your head that's keeping you Stuck where you are right now. He says, if you're committed, you can achieve this and more. And so I was like, wow, this guy's freaking brilliant. And so I, after about, I don't know, 15, 20 seconds of just Dr. Brown, I'm committed. So he says, good, in that case, I'm going to give you your first step. I want you to go home, back to Montreal. I took the train 350 miles to meet this man. I took the train back to Montreal in April of 1980. He says, Here's $100 to buy your train ticket back. Says, I'll see you back here next week. I will start to mentor you. So In May of 1980, I moved to Toronto, not knowing a person in Toronto, except for my brother who was living there. And that's how I actually met this man. And Allen Brown took me under his wing and I started working for his real estate company. He paid for me to get into real estate. And on May 5, 1980, I started real estate. On June 20, 1980, I graduated. And the reason I know these dates so well, jj, it was the only test I had passed without stealing the answers or cheating throughout entire high school. And this I did on my own. And then he began to mentor me every day on the power of my mind. And I started to do visualizations and meditation and affirmations and a whole bunch of other brain training, cognitive priming, inner sizes that transformed my life at the age of 1920. And I have been researching it and studying the brain ever since then because I needed to know what, what happened to me? How was I able to change? And so I've been on this journey now since, you know, 1980 until now.

So you've got a blueprint. So what's, how does the blueprint, I'm sorry, how's the blueprint fit into this?

I have something called my Exceptional Life Blueprint. I actually have it.

I love that story though. I've heard that story, it's fantastic.

Called John Ashraf's Exceptional Life Blueprint. And every time I tell people about Allen Brown's goal setting, documents, psi, do you have any? And so I said, why don't I just give you the Exceptional Life Blueprint that I have with all of my goals in there for my vision, my purpose, my habits, my inner mission, my highest values, habits I will start habits. I will stop my daily rituals and I'll just give people my document filled out with all of my stuff with a blank sheet for them to fill it out so that they can get Started giving their brain the instruction of what it is that they want to achieve.

Awesome.

That's incredible. That's fantastic. Okay, now everybody's salivating. Here's how you get it. You go to jjvirgin.com lifeblueprint now, here's what's cool. Not only are you going to get that, we'll do that link to the, to your book and how to go about getting all those great bonuses that you talked about. So you'll get that and you will get the show notes in case you want to read yourself through the exercises. Because I actually like to get to read my way through things. So you'll have that too. But again, jjvirgin.com forward/lifeblueprint. Pick that up. That is so awesome, John. Thank you so much. I super appreciate you.

Yeah, I mean, it's what I use every year to set all of my goals.

It seems to be working.

Got the process down pat.

Yes. You know, it's like I look at your life, you've got a great life, a great wife, great relationships, great friends, if I do say so myself. Beautiful place, everything's, you know, healthy, great. Everything's dialed. So this is a great blueprint to follow. I really appreciate it and I love having you back on again. Thank you for your time today.

My joy, I love being on with you and your, your friends from, you know, from around the world who listen to you.

So after the break, we'll be answering a listener's question. So stay with me.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I answer listeners question. I pulled this one off of my DM on Instagram from sharing Charlotte said, JJ, I'm curious as to how you stay motivated. Ooh, that's a good one. So I'm going to give you a couple different things that I love and I thought this was perfect with what John's been teaching and it really does dovetail perfectly. So I want to do a big shout out and a big recommendation again to grab his book Inner Size. I will share with you that all of my programs and books Virgin Diet, Sugar Impact Diet, Warrior Mom. In all of them, I talk about your why. And I was introduced to this concept of it's not the how, it's the why years and years and years ago back when I was actually 30. And it has just become a way I live my life. Like to me, the how's never the issue. There's always like, gosh, nowadays with Google, like it's, it's not hard to find a million different ways least to accomplish a goal, but the first thing is to have a big enough why to make you actually do what you need to do. So I'm always focused on the why. Make sure my why is big enough. Once I've got the why really dialed and very clear, then I am going to and just like you know what you heard from John when he was so clear on the outcome that he wanted right when my son was in the hospital and I talk about this in Warrior Mom, I just was so clear I wanted him to be 110%. And here's what's crazy. I was trying to figure out why he seemed kind of stuck over the last couple months and I realized he's 110% he's better than before the accident. Wow. So then once I get that clear, right, Then I'm going to look for someone who's done what I want to do. Success leaves clues and I hire a coach, a mentor, and I think this is super important. You go find someone who's done what you want to do and hire them. And ideally, in the perfect world, they would charge you more than you can afford because then what you're going to do is really pay attention. Right? But there's a variety of different ways to find that coach or mentor. But find the coach or mentor, hire them however you need to do that so that you have that support and you know the track you need to run on. Then next, surround yourself with a like minded community who's going to help hold you accountable and support you as well. One of the things that I've really focused on is creating an amazing community. Jim Rohn says that your income's the average of the five people you hang out with the most. I believe it goes way farther than income. I believe your habits, your health, your relationships. You know, I hang out with people who are just in amazing relationships, great couples, and because I want to be in a great relationship with my husband and a great couple, they're great parents. Right? So you are who you hang out with. So that is the other little key to my success is to do that. And honestly, it is. It's not easy, but it's that simple. That simple. So figure out your why, then find that person who's where you want to be. Your after picture. Hire them, join them, get them as your coach and mentor and then surround yourself with a community of support to hold you accountable and help you. Alrighty. Hope that served you. I will look forward to seeing you next week. And if you haven't subscribed, make sure you do so you don't miss any of this goodness. All right, bye.

That's all for this episode of the JJ Virginia Lifestyle show, which marks another step towards a healthier body and mind. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show and we'll talk to you next week.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next reading. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years, and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And, of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader, and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website what Should I read next podcast.com to find out more.